Places & Travel

From Showtime's drama The L-Word, actor Jennifer Beals and creator Ilene Chaiken. Beals became a star for her role in the 80's dance classic, Flashdance. She's also starred in Devil in a Blue Dress, The Last Days of Disco and The Anniversary Party. On The L-Word, she plays Bette Porter, a gay art curator. Chaiken's previous TV work includes writing Damaged Care and Dirty Pictures. The L-Word wraps up its first season this weekend.

Sullivan is the author of the critically acclaimed books, The Meadowlands and A Whale Hunt. His new book is Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants. One reviewer writes, "in prose worthy of Joseph Mitchell, a... skittering, scurrying, terrific natural history." Sullivan is a contributing editor to Vogue and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker.

He's now the area security manager for KBR, a division of Halliburton, a private military firm. Vargas has been stationed in Tikrit, Iraq, for the past year. He talks about the capture of Saddam Hussein, which took place in Tikrit. Vargas is a retired Command Sergeant Major of the U.S. Special Forces. He's written the foreword to the new book Hunting Down Saddam: the Inside Story of the Search and Capture, by Robin Moore.

The Fresh Air book critic reviews three books about life in New York City: Love Monkey, by Kyle Smith, Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts, by Charlie LeDuff, and Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan, by Phillip Lopate.

Weide is executive producer and a writer for HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm. The show stars Larry David, who co-created Seinfeld, as himself. One reviewer calls Curb Your Enthusiasm "a comedy of hostility, resentment, paranoia and obsessiveness." The show is currently in its fourth season.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews "The Sopranos" - which begins its fifth season on HBO Sunday.

She has reported on Haiti for a number of years and is the author of the book The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier. She also edited and translated the book In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti by deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Wilentz is a contributing editor for The Nation, and a former associate professor of journalism at Columbia University.

Kathie Klarreich is a freelance writer who has covered Haiti for more than 15 years. She is a Christian Science Monitor stringer and op-ed writer — and is currently reporting for Time magazine. She'll talk to us from Port-au-Prince.

Coll is managing editor of The Washington Post. His new book is Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Coll previously covered Afghanistan for the Post and was the paper's South Asia bureau chief between 1989 and 1992. He won the Pulitzer in 1990 for explanatory journalism.

TV critic David Bianculli previews the final episode of HBO's Sex and the City.

Boyle is a Jesuit priest who has worked with gangs in East Los Angeles since 1986. He was originally supposed to work with the Dolores Mission there for a six-year term, but when the time came to leave, the community revolted, and he was allowed to stay. He's received national acclaim for his work helping the people he works with to find jobs and quality schooling.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews 50 First Dates, the new romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore.

A new book investigates Operation Condor, the secret alliance between six Latin American military dictatorships in the 1970s. It was formed to track down the regimes’ enemies and assassinate them. Author John Dinges is a former managing editor of NPR News, and has written for The Washington Post and Time. He teaches journalism at Columbia University. His book is The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents.

Sheffer is the founder, conductor and artistic director of the New-York based orchestra. The group is known for the diversity of its musical program and rediscovering neglected works. They've performed works by Wagner, George Gershwin, Franz Schubert, Philip Glass and Paul Bowles. In March, the orchestra will perform the U.S. premiere of the Jonathan Dove adaptation of Wagner's The Valkyrie.

Music critic Milo Miles reviews the collection The Rough Guide to the Music of Morocco.

Kassem is an Egyptian human-rights activist and the publisher of Cairo Times, Egypt's only independent English-language news magazine.

As an actress, she's best-known for her portrayal of Princess Leia in the Star Wars movies. She's also the author of the bestsellers Postcards From the Edge (which she adapted into a screenplay for the film of the same name), and Surrender the Pink. Like Postcards from the Edge, Fisher's new book The Best Awful is based on her own life. In it, Hollywood actress Suzanne Vale's husband leaves her for another man, and then she is diagnosed with bipolar illness.

He just won a Golden Globe for the film Osama, which he wrote and directed. It was shot in post-Taliban Afghanistan. It's based on a true story about a mother who disguises her 12-year old daughter as a boy so that she can work and earn an income under the Taliban regime. Barmak also runs the Afghan film organization and is director of the Afghan Children Education Movement, an association that promotes literacy, culture and the arts.

Landesman is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. He investigated the sex slave industry for this week's cover story (Sunday, Jan. 25), "The Girls Next Door." He found that tens of thousands of women, girls and boys are smuggled into the United States from Eastern Europe and held captive as sex slaves in American cities like New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago. Landesman reports that the U.S. government has done little to pursue the traffickers.

Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Amateur Marriage, the new book by Anne Tyler.